CBS producer Mary Mapes, memos, and a Presidential election.

Last March, Rathergate blogger Kevin Craver held a contest here to named Mary Mapes’s novel. The winners were announced, and The Mapes of Wrath took the contest:

Follow the disenfranchised staff of CBS News as they wander west through the wastes of Texas. “They tryin’ to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on’y way a fella can keep his decency is by takin’ a sock at Dick Thornburgh and Lou Boccardi. They’re workin’ on our decency.�

Well, the actual name of the Mapes novel is: Truth and Duty : The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. It is due out November 8, and it is now for sale at Amazon.com.

[more beneath the fold]

Amazon includes on the sale page an excerpt of sorts, which looks to be self-serving dross, but what could we expect?

Here’s what she wrote about you, my friends:

I had a real physical reaction as I read the angry online accounts. It was something between a panic attack, a heart attack, and a nervous breakdown. My palms were sweaty; I gulped and tried to breathe. My heart was pounding like I had become a cartoon character whose heart outline pushes out the front of her shirt with each beat. The little girl in me wanted to crouch and hide behind the door and cry my eyes out.

And the adult in her wanted to influence a U.S. Presidential election by way of fraud and deceit. That is an obscene betrayal of the media’s trust, which trust is now a cartoon character whose heart outline pushes the… what?!? That prose is more than just a little bit freakish.

Kevin, whose book is going well and will contain a chapter taking down the Mapes novel, has some questions for Mary:

Mapes’ book means that she actually found a 1972 typewriter that has Microsoft Word? Or that she will finally answer as to why she committed the unpardonable journalistic sin of putting Bill Burkett in contact with the Kerry campaign?

For a trip down memory lane, here is the open letter to Mapes he wrote last March. He points out to Mary that her novel might have a tough time of it, if history is the indicator:

Jayson Blair’s memoir sold a whopping 1,400 copies in its first two weeks, according to Nielsen BookScan, which monitors about 70 percent of book sales. Stephen Glass’ book about his lies at The New Republic did similarly pitiful.

Kevin says he will read it. I won’t go near it. What about you?

Of course, maybe the bit about the cartoon character pushing off her shirt might sell a few copies.